


At the Whims of Demons

by TrickCheebs



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, more of henry having a fucking mental breakdown over his body going to hell, nightmares ahoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 17:11:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20029381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrickCheebs/pseuds/TrickCheebs
Summary: sequel to Devil in the fine lines that is getting its own shit bc eehhhhenry continues to have a bad time, and not even sleeping helps, it only gets worse hahaminor body horror and dark themes in here tho so..





	At the Whims of Demons

To say that his body ached would be a gross understatement..Every movement sent ripples of pain rolling through him, whether from exhaustion from nearly dying..or things he was desperately trying to avoid thinking about he couldn’t quite tell. Forcing himself onward down the hall at a slow crawl helped distract himself from the current worries..But Henry could only do so much before he’d have to face facts, and he knew it..His energy had been slowly dropping ever since he had woken back up in the ink reservoir, he needed some proper sleep for starters..maybe after that he’d hurt less and have a possibly clearer head.

The whole experience had shaken him honestly, every pool of ink made him recoil slightly now..well now that he knew what it was possibly made of, that is..The studio now felt so much more..hostile and claustrophobic somehow..as if it were some living entity slowly closing itself around him with dark intentions. He staggered onward regardless, some small hope that things were only looking so grim due to his exhaustion, and that when a safe haven presented itself things would improve with sleep. A small kindness in the form of a unlocked sketch room eventually presented itself to Henry, who happily trudged inside to lock the door for a few hours sleep.

Sadly as soon as the door clicked shut, the pain that had settled over his body like a worn coat had decided now was a good time to get serious. Henry soon found himself fighting to breathe without his chest feeling like it was in a vice, wracking coughs working themselves up from his very core with every forced breath. Collapsing into the only chair in the room he tried to still the pangs, finding himself quickly losing that battle and finding his own body becoming a agonizing prison in need of air. Forcing himself to breathe deep and trying defiantly suppress the oncoming coughs he found blood on the hand covering his mouth…While that alone was enough to scare him..the fact that it was much too dark to be healthy blood scared him further….A thought at the brink of his mind quietly made the realization that it had a familiar….inky quality to it.

No, no he was only imagining things..he had to be right? Okay yes the blood was very alarming but..he had dealt with worse in the past..He’d make it through this too somehow in the end. He always did, Henry prided himself on being able to see things through to the end..But he never had to deal with this before..Things had made sense and he could always rely on the sanity of the world to stay..Nothing here made sense anymore..and he didn’t want to make sense of it..

“Stop thinking yourself into a loop Henry…it’ll be alright. I’ll find Joey and he’ll tell me what’s going on…and maybe how to fix this..”

Reassuring himself..even if his voice was now hoarse and soft from the coughing fits helped if only a little bit..Sleep always helped, and this was a situation where he could use every bit of help he could find. With some effort he got comfortable..and despite the threatening spasms in his chest to start another fit of coughing…sleep finally came at last.

He’d later on regret ever sleeping in the first place.

At first it was a fitful sleep, Henry waking up now and again from the need to cough and clear his lungs before passing back out..But slowly he fell into a much deeper sleep, enough for dreams to begin creeping in..and when the true hell began for poor Henry in earnest.

Dreams never were supposed to make much sense, Henry once thought. They were always some strange thing about flying, or doing things impossible by normal human standards. But it was always something nice to talk about over a warm cup of coffee the next morning. This dream however, was the sort of thing one prayed that its grip would not take them in its embrace for as long as they lived ever again…..

Henry found himself staring out onto a black sea, stretching out into the horizon and beyond under a sky that threatened a maelstrom at any second now..Looking down he spotted the waves meeting the equally black cliffs he found himself standing on..The monochrome landscape felt cold and silent..that was what bothered Henry the most..he felt the wind on his face, saw the waves crashing into land down below..But it was as if it was muted to him..A soft tremor beneath his feet caused him to look down once more, was the cliff giving away under his feet? Come to think of it..the cliffs looked strange, they were too rounded..too smooth. In fact they weren’t the edges of a cliff at all as Henry found out when they began curling inwards toward him. Feeling his so called solid ground begin to rise up, he fell to his knees as the hand carried him upwards..Henry feeling like his stomach had been left behind somewhere far below.

Did he want to see what controlled the hand currently holding him? Something told him no, but the idea of having his back to whatever this was seemed so much worse..Steeling himself he turned at last to see what he was dealing with. A sickening thought in his mind felt this towering thing looked familiar..and that the fact this was evident meant he should be terrified…He couldn’t quite get a hold of what its face appeared to be..but forms crawled along the surface, writhing in and out of view in some never ending dance all their own. He was well aware that it was staring at him for the sole fact that a massive eye had taken to stare at him like some hellish spotlight from above. He wanted to run, but it was either this or the blackened sea below him. As the massive face slowly loomed down to inspect him properly, Henry made his choice…and jumped to the seas awaiting embrace.

It was a foolish choice, but compared to the alternative it was one he was happy to make. Said choice did not please whatever he had been held by as a deep spine juttering rumble took to the air as Henry fell. It didn’t sound like any animal Henry would willingly want to meet..and it certainly didn’t sound human. The noise alone scared him in ways he hadn’t quite the time to process, but it scared the wits out of him on a almost instinctual level. Such antediluvian concepts were best left to be pondered by saner men in safer locales, or fools with no regard of their own safety. He could feel it trying to beat him to the waters below, to reclaim its prize before lost from sight. Henry hit the sea moments before the hand did, allowing him to get one good breath of air before his world was turned into a darkened storm of chaos.

His fall had caused him to sink fairly deep into the water..or what he had hoped was water before jumping..It felt warm and wrong, clinging to the skin almost hungrily so as he tried to maneuver himself..He didn’t so much as hear but felt the pressure shift about him as the hand came down to find him, feeling large digits brush past him as they plunged deeper to seek him out. Swimming proved difficult, the so called water seemed to resist him at every turn. Getting annoyed as the need for air began to grow urgent Henry’s list of mistakes grew one number more as he opened his eyes under the water. Shapes met his blurred vision..things resembling mouths and eyes darted in and out of sight with every passing second. The clinging sensation on his skin felt so much more like hands and claws now..he had to surface, he needed to surface now but the world he found himself in had grown far to fond of its new inhabitant to consider letting him go. Struggling he felt himself sink steadily, as if he were being passed down into the thick depths..Henry felt himself begin to panic..his chest burned like a fire had been set to it, thrashing madly he tried to stretch out heavenward for air, for anything but this. His body convulsed against his will, wanting something to fill the void that his lungs had become the dark, sick fluids eagerly took the place of air. Clinging to his mouth, his throat and every inch in between Henry felt himself convulse all the harder, retching weakly to rid himself in vain of that ungodly fluid.

It took him several minutes to realize the retching his body was forcing upon him was not a dream…but reality at last. How had he wound up on the floor was anyone’s guess..but his body heaved and contorted in fresh pain every second he was now awake. His body burned, if he didn’t know it he would of thought he had been set ablaze..Henry felt his stomach weakly try and turn itself inside out once more, was the back mess on the floor before him thanks to that or something else he couldn’t quite tell. His throat was raw from coughing and now this, leaving his voice a grating ghost of its former self..it wasn’t like he could call for help anyways down here.. Slowly pushing himself into a siting position, a soft cry of pain came forth, had he bruised himself? Both arms felt like someone had tried to wrench them from their sockets, they looked…thin and gnarled like some decrepit tree..No..no he was seeing things..His arms were fine weren’t they? He felt them, wanting to prove his eyes wrong he was dripping all over himself in worry now.

…The ink was dry when he came in here..wasn’t it? Why did it come off his arms in thick fresh strands? it made his hands look almost like claws with how its hung off of them…The dream..yes the dream was to blame, it was making him think all this was real..that his clothes felt loose while his skin felt like it had begun to shrink..He just needed a shower, that was all. 

“It’s fine…it’ll be fine Henry..I just need to calm down..we’re just thinking strange things after we saw what they..ugh..N-no..that’s not right..”

Holding his head he tried to keep himself straight, he would be fine…he had to keep telling himself that, even as he felt his ink begin to drip down..Claws digging lightly into his skin-NO! Hands..he had hands not claws..He was still human, he was still Henry. Everything still hurt, he had a feeling it would always hurt now..He was still human even if he didn’t look like it anymore..Even if he felt his bones shift under his skin, even if the ink wouldn’t wash off now no matter how hard he’d scrub.

He was still Henry, they would not take that from him..even when there was nothing else left to take. He was still Henry, even after the reservoir called him home like all the others…He was still Henry..and Henry was who they wanted, and who they took.


End file.
